O.C. police vow to seek drivers who ignored red-light tickets

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Three Orange County police departments that had not been regularly following up on unpaid red light camera citations said this week that they're taking new steps to track down scofflaws who don't respond to their tickets.

The changes come two weeks after an Orange County Register investigation showed that police and court workers rarely complete the complicated process required to punish red light violators. As a result, people who ignore their citations have escaped fines and driving penalties while those who own up to their mistakes are punished with a $349 fine and a mark on their driving records.

As many as 25,000 motorists have gotten away without paying a ticket since 2004, causing cities to forfeit a total of up to $3.5 million in ticket revenue, the Register found.

"The problem here is a sense of confidence that there's equality," Laguna Woods Mayor Bert Hack said Wednesday. Hack spoke during a City Council meeting, where officials called for police to pursue people who don't respond to the citations they receive in the mail.

"There is no one who gets a citation who is not incensed," Hack said later. "Maybe that's the intent, to let them froth. But you just have to make the system as fair as you can."

Police in San Juan Capistrano and Los Alamitos also have begun following up with people who ignore their citations, they say.

Costa Mesa Police officer Ken Noble insists that his department has been doing the work all along. But court officials last month described their participation as sporadic at best. Noble says that just last week, he pursued 20 motorists who hadn't responded to their citations.

Garden Grove and Santa Ana already had pledged to seek out scofflaws, joining Fullerton Police, the only department that the court could confirm had been regularly doing the work to hold ticket evaders accountable.

Court CEO Alan Slater told the Register last month that the court was considering whether to fine motorists who ignore their tickets, even if there is no follow-up by police. Current court policy requires police to verify that the person issued the ticket was the person driving before motorists can be penalized for ignoring their citations.

When police do the work, drivers can be slapped with an additional $300 fine and driving privilege restrictions. But until now, police were rarely doing that follow up work and in many cases, the court wasn't providing them with the information they needed to do so. As a result, thousands ignored their tickets without consequence.

The court started providing police with that information at the beginning of the year.

But Superior Court spokeswoman Carole Levitzky warned this week that the court's executive committee might not choose to change the policy at all. She said a decision could take weeks or even months, as the judges weigh protecting people's rights, safety and police officers' time.

Departments with red light cameras are still figuring out how to manage the workload.

Garden Grove Police officer Tim Murray estimates it takes about 45 minutes to follow up on each unpaid citation. He has filed nearly 20 affidavits with the court in recent weeks and has a stack of about 15 that he plans to submit soon, he said.

Lt. Bill Griffin, the chief of police services in Laguna Woods, told city council members that the additional work would require overtime for one deputy dedicated to spending half his time processing the citations. A Laguna Woods staff report identified 517 citations in 2006 - about 15 percent of those issued that year - where motorists did not respond.

"It's important for violators to be confident in the program and to know that all will be prosecuted fairly," Griffin told the council. "It's a problem across the board with red light cameras."

Deputy Joe Cope in San Juan Capistrano said he is working through a list of about 200 motorists who didn't respond to their citations over a one-year period.

"We're working on it to make sure that everyone answers to their citations equally," Cope said. "I'm not sure everyone was aware of how big the problem was."

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